Akuapem Poloo's 7-year-old son can be taken away from her - Social Welfare Department

Social Welfare Department Social Welfare Department

Samuel Anaglattey, Head of Foster Care Services Unit at the Department of Social Welfare has revealed that the 7-year-old son of popular actress Rosemond Brown aka Akuapem Poloo can be taken from her for safety reasons when need be.

According to him, the Social Welfare Department has the mandate to remove the child from his mother, if findings from their investigations suggest that the child is in harms way.

"That is dependent on the sort of investigation we have conducted, but I'm just letting you know that it could get worse. We have that right to separate the child from her, or remove the child from the environment."

The actress has been heavily criticized for posting a nude photo of herself and her son to mark the child's 7th birthday.

Speaking to GhanaWeb in an exclusive interview on July 2, 2020, about the issue, Mr Anaglattey stated that the department's main focus is to find out if Akuapem Poloo's son is not in danger now or even in the future.

"In situations like these, it is the child that is the main focus. We all know the problems a thing like this will pose for children now and in the future. And what it this is likely to pose for other children. As she has exposed the child, nobody knows the length at which they have gone, we have only seen this picture."

He told GhanaWeb that the gravity of Akuapem Poloo's act is that she does not only put her son in danger, but also endangers other innocent children psychologically.

"The child can pick up certain behaviours that will make him a threat to other children. He goes to school and he starts touching other children, starts exposing himself to other children of his age. So he now goes out there and starts corrupting the minds of other children."

The future repercussion of her actions on her son is that he becomes a victim of stigmatization.

"It also poses a lot of moral danger to the child because he can fall victim to stigmatization. He can be called names, as a result of his mother's pornographic photo," he told GhanaWeb.

The Head of Foster Care Services Unit of the Social Welfare Department said, the controversial actress is supposed to report to the department today, July 2, 2020, for investigations to begin. He reiterated that the actress had earlier on declined several invitations sent to her.

"When this happens, we do an assessment and we think that there are a lot more issues out there that can continue corrupting the child. She has apologized on the internet but we have invited her, she hasn't come."

He explained that the invitation is to take Akuapem Poloo through counseling therapy since she claimed, she was not in the known that posing nude in front of her son was offensive.

"The reason why we invited her is to see if we can counsel her because she said she didn't know what she did was wrong. So we wanted to invite her, assess her and take her through little counseling so that she knows how to handle issues like this in the future.

Mr. Anaglattey emphasized that should the actress fail to report to the unit today, the unit will locate her and begin their assessment.

"She hasn't come to the office, we are expecting that she comes today. If she doesn't come, what can happen is that we will try and locate her, do an assessment.

It could get so bad that we may decide to even remove the child from the environment until we are done working on her before we can return the child to her. So immediately, we are waiting for her to come, it's just unfortunate we can't locate her. We will talk to her and continue with our assessment."

He concluded that the findings from the assessment will determine the necessary action to be taken, which is geared towards the interest of the child.

"If at the end of the day, we come out with the conclusion that the child is still safe with her but we just have to keep an eye on her and monitor her. If we think the child is in danger, we have the mandate to remove the child from her based on the child's best interest."

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection on Wednesday called on the public to stop posting the nude pictures of Ms. Rosemond Brown on social media platforms.

Source: www.ghanaweb.com